What explains elite contempt for Joe Rogan? – System Update with Glenn Greenwald

35:27
great you know there’s just tremendous
35:29
homogeneity now in in american culture
35:32
right
35:32
uh it’s the idea that these are the
35:34
types of people
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who should be both in charge
35:39
of talking about liberal left
35:42
politics and who should really be in
35:44
charge of the country in general there
35:45
are people who right now have cultural
35:46
hegemony in this country
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right um and it’s the idea that these
35:51
people
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are sort of the these are the people who
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embody
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what should be american morality right
35:58
now right these are the people who
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embody what that is and
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should hold the cultural level levers of
36:04
power in the country and who
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should have the power to be speaking on
36:09
uh the important topics of the day
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so that’s sort of what i mean by that
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what is joe what does joe rogan
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lack on that list of
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attributes that people think define
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those who should be
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exerting influence and power over our
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discourse in politics
36:27
well i think what he lacks is i mean
36:30
the most important thing he lacks is
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the um willingness to exclude everyone
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else from the debate who isn’t a part of
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that culture i mean i think that’s
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probably the primary thing that enrages
36:43
them
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is that he i mean one of the reasons why
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his show is so popular is that it’s a
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really powerful cross-pollination
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of ideas of different fields of
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different
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industries people from all these
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different walks of life
36:58
um it’s you know it’s it’s a great
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reflection of internet culture you know
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one of the reasons why the show is so
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popular is that it kind of operates on
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internet time
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right as opposed to you know cable news
37:08
that
37:09
is kind of really slow to pick up on
37:11
things probably because of its older
37:12
demographic whereas
37:14
joe rogan is able to seize on something
37:16
that appeared on a message board
37:17
yesterday right and i mean even if you
37:19
watch his show
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um they’re able to fact that fat check
37:23
themselves in real time right he’s got
37:25
his sidekick there jamie who
37:27
pulls something up to verify whether
37:29
what joe
37:30
what joe just said is totally full of
37:32
i mean that’s not something you’re
37:33
going to see chris hayes do
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or sean hannity do right like that’s
37:37
just not the way it works
37:38
everyone’s online today i mean the
37:41
entire country is essentially getting
37:42
email
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and facebook and all that jazz like why
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bother
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doing it in this particular medium that
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has an inherent time constraint
37:51
well you’re right i mean the internet
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has revolutionized
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politics and in many ways good ways we
37:58
use
37:59
our social media our email list which is
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very large
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we every day we’re sending out stuff and
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other candidates are doing it the same
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way
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but television still has a very
38:07
important role to be playing um and so
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probably it’s it’s partly that uh and
38:12
it’s
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and it’s partly you know his his
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willingness
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to transgress on issues that are
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considered
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sacred right not necessarily obviously
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the big one nowadays is the trans issue
38:25
the transgenderism issue
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he’s willing to talk about that and he’s
38:28
willing to bring in
38:30
um perspectives on it that right now
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liberals are just have
38:34
zero zero tolerance for um and so
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so let me let me let’s stop there for a
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second so
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you know i’m i’m i’m i to kind of
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present what i think would be the
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best or strongest case that a liberal
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would make for why joe rogan ought to be
38:54
regarded
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certainly not as an ally and even as an
38:58
enemy
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and one is the one that you just put
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your finger on so this week there was a
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report in vice
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that employees of sportify which is the
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platform that essentially just paid joe
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rogan
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in excess of 100 million dollars for his
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show exclusively to appear there
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are upset um and it came from
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how they what they described themselves
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as being lgbtq
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a i plus employees
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and allies so not just the lgbtqai plus
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employees but also their allies are
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upset because
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in particular he has had on his show
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number one an author who has argued
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that there are times when young people
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are influenced to believe
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that they have gender dysphoria and to
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even begin
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irreversible transitions when in fact
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they don’t have gender dysphoria because
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of the culture that is encouraging them
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to think that to what
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in other words questioning whether young
40:08
people are being misdiagnosed
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with gender dysphoria who don’t in fact
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have it and there are definitely people
40:14
who
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have said that they have been that
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they’ve gone through that process only
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to realize that
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that wasn’t their issue so that was one
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of the problems is just
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airing an author who did research and
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science
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who said that to some extent people are
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being misdiagnosed
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and then i guess the other one was him
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being an mma fan
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a fighting fan as you alluded to earlier
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questioning whether it’s fair
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to allow uh trans women who
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live their lives uh as biological men
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who went through puberty as biological
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men who developed muscle mass and
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hormones and
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um the entire physiology of a man to
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then
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transition and compete with cis women
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something that people like martina
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navratilova who’s been a long time
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advocate for trans people have asked as
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well and that
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essentially this demonstrates his
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willingness not just to air these
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views but to even kind of wonder them
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himself
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suggests that he’s transphobic which is
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a form of bigotry
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and we ought not to have any kind of
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alliance with
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or support for people who are bigots
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that’s one of the
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cases that is made against joe oregon
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why isn’t that valid
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so i mean it goes to the point that i
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that the question you just asked
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me and the point that i made which is
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that you know
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what makes what makes it what makes joe
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rogan
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seen as not an ally and you know
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what makes him come across as not an
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ally is that he is not
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actively engaged in the culture war
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right i mean what’s so crucial to people
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who are actually
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actively engaged in liberal culture war
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is that you have to be
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actively seen as saying you know this is
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our line and anyone who does not
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um hew to this line is the enemy right
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and if you’re not
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a part if you’re not a part of the
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solution you’re a part of the problem
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essentially
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and so when joe rogan someone like joe
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rogan comes along and says hey there are
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some interesting issues here hey
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let’s talk about this hey there are some
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certain scientific studies
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that immediately raises all the alarms
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in people’s heads
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saying that uh oh this is not one of us
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this is not one of the allies right like
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this isn’t someone who is going
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to be doing the work that we define
42:32
ourselves by
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the work of advancing the culture war
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right and if you’re not advancing the
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culture war
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then you’re as good as the enemy if not
42:42
the enemy is ironic right because like
42:44
george george bush’s
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911 formulation that liberals
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incessantly not just mock but we’re
42:51
very alarmed by was that you know
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every country has a choice you’re with
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us or you’re with the terrorists it’s
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one or the other there’s no middle
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ground if you’re not
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actively supporting what we’re doing
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we’re going to regard you as an
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ally of the terrorists or even one of
43:08
the terrorists and that means that
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for example in the culture war you
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become the enemy not merely by
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advocating against trans rights but
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questioning the premises the science
43:23
behind the implications of these very
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profound social changes
43:27
that a lot of people are advocating
43:29
right and and that’s what you saw from
43:30
this vice article right
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um it was actually a perfect case study
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i mean first of all the headline said
43:37
joe rogan’s transphobic episode or
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something like that or
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transphobic joe rogan you know it
43:43
clearly editorialized before you even
43:45
you didn’t i mean you didn’t even have
43:47
to read the article right like you you
43:48
just read the headline and you know
43:50
exactly what the article is saying
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but beyond that it also completely
43:55
sidestepped the debate as we’re just
43:56
saying now right
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this episode that they’re talking about
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that that’s causing all the drama
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internally and spotify if you watch it
44:04
there’s
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two important things to know about it
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first of all before
44:08
anything happened and again the reason
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why this stuff works so well is because
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no one actually listens to the episodes
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who care involved in this
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in this war right in these battles
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because or they see
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like one minute chosen snippets
44:20
deliberately selected to
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cast it in the responsible light right
44:26
right exactly but so he starts off right
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off the bat and he’s
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and he says this episode is not about
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adults right
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this is not about trans adults we
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completely believe in trans adult rights
44:37
we believe in their identities
44:38
we are completely supportive of them um
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i joe rogan and completely a supporter
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of trans adults right so that’s
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important to set aside
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um because right off the bat you know
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that he’s not talking about
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tran the idea of transgenderism in
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general obviously right
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you can’t i’ve heard him say before i’ve
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heard him say before
45:00
not only do i fully support the complete
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range and panoply of
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robust equal legal rights for trans
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people
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and not only do i believe that they have
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the absolute right to live their lives
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with full and complete dignity and
45:15
liberty
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which is consistent with his overall
45:18
philosophy i’ve heard him say
45:20
i have nothing but love in my heart for
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trans people in fact
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admiration for people who are willing to
45:27
defy societal convention to be
45:29
who they are so it’s almost like even on
45:32
the question of trans issues
45:34
from a liberal perspective he’s way
45:38
ahead of
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the vast majority of where the
45:40
population is in terms of how he talks
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about it
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um so you’re right he he carves out this
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kind of
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you know um territory that he’s saying
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i’m not
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questioning the rights fully of trans
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adults to live a complete and full
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life filled with dignity and love um
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so what is it that that became
46:02
problematic
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so what became problematic is that you
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know the rest of the show
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is devoted to the issue of children
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who you know children teenagers
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people going through adolescence who
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come across the idea of transgenderism
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and think that maybe transgenderism has
46:24
some kind of answers
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for what may be the natural kind of
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patterns and challenges that children go
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through in young age
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um you know normally and also you know
46:36
in these days
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we’re suffering through a mental health
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crisis right one that probably
46:40
even preceded um coded but has just been
46:44
amped up
46:44
greatly during covid right but generally
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the
46:47
the idea and the author of the book who
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i will say you know the the author of
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the book the title
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was a little bit sensationalist and i
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think that’s probably driving a
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little bit you know it’s something like
46:57
they’re coming for our daughters or
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something like that which you know
47:00
listen i if i was advising someone to
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write a book that you want well received
47:03
broadly
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you might do a better job with the title
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but and that’s not and that’s not a book
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written by joe it’s not a book written
47:10
by joe rogan it’s a book written
47:14
not always favorably right he
47:16
interrogated that person on
47:17
a lot of those premises exactly and he
47:20
did and he did do a good job of actually
47:22
kind of talking about the cover and
47:23
saying well why did you go with this
47:24
cover
47:25
and i mean it was he did this job on
47:27
that end actually right
47:28
um but more importantly this entire
47:32
episode was talking about
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whether there’s an issue with kids
47:37
that you know kind of exploring
47:39
transgenderism and actually
47:41
moving forward with it when maybe it’s
47:43
not it maybe it’s
47:44
sort of a product of just a tumultuous
47:47
adolescence and maybe
47:49
allowing children to do this and engage
47:51
in this is maybe not the right move
47:53
essentially saying
47:54
maybe these children who think they’re
47:55
trans aren’t actually trans and maybe we
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should be
47:58
engaging the science engaging um
48:02
engaging the experts on this issue to
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kind of sort this out so that
48:06
you know we’re not we’re not kind of
48:09
sending people
48:10
on this path that will sort of you know
48:12
uproot their lives and
48:14
things that they’ll have to undo later
48:16
on and just causing more trauma into
48:18
adulthood right
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it’s a way to argue against that which
48:20
is to say well no we’ve talked to the
48:22
experts and the experts say this isn’t a
48:24
widespread
48:25
issue or when we interrogate these
48:27
children who think they might be trans
48:29
there are real reasons why they think
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they are or you know look into that
48:33
literature
48:33
bring it up bring the experts in and
48:35
actually engage this debate but of
48:37
course that’s not what they’re in for
48:38
right like this that’s not what this is
48:40
about
48:40
this is about immediately kind of
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shutting down the debate
48:44
and saying okay you’re on the you’re not
48:47
you’re not advancing
48:49
the the cause the trans cause and the
48:51
broader culture cause so you’re clearly
48:52
part of the problem you’re not being an
48:54
ally right and that’s why
48:56
this word ally is has become so
48:58
important and this broader kind of
49:00
critical theory culture war
49:02
um dynamic is because this idea of ally
49:07
it’s not just it’s not a it’s not just
49:09
an affirmational
49:11
kind of identity of being an ally but
49:12
it’s a negational identity right what
49:14
it’s saying is that
49:15
if you’re an ally it means you’re
49:17
actually part of this
49:19
right you’re not you’re not someone who
49:21
is just letting it happen or working
49:23
against us if you’re not an ally
49:25
it’s not just that you’re being lazy
49:26
they’re not trying to you know when they
49:28
say you’re not an ally what they’re
49:29
saying is that you’re the enemy
49:31
right yeah you know there’s several
49:32
there’s there’s a couple things really
49:34
interesting to me about that which is
49:36
obviously part of my formative
49:38
experience in
49:39
being politically engaged was being part
49:43
of the gay rights movement
49:44
in the late 80s or even the mid 80s to
49:48
late 80s when i kind of came of age as
49:51
a gay teenager in the reagan years there
49:53
was obviously just like there is against
49:56
trans people now it sustained an
49:57
organized demonization campaign
49:59
right obviously the people who were just
50:02
you know
50:03
close-minded malicious bigots
50:06
were not people that you regarded as
50:08
allies those are people you were willing
50:09
to kind of demonize and scorn but the
50:11
reason why
50:13
that debate ended up being won by
50:16
advocates of
50:17
gay equality was because we were
50:19
constantly searching for ways to
50:22
engage people and to change their minds
50:24
and
50:25
encouraging those questions to be asked
50:27
based on the recognition
50:29
that if you want to usher in very
50:31
profound
50:32
changes to how society functions
50:35
and do so in a way that requires a
50:38
majority to support you
50:40
even though the majority is not um part
50:43
of the group who’s
50:45
on be on whose behalf you’re advocating
50:48
dialogue
50:48
and engagement is crucial and so people
50:51
who want to
50:52
engage and ask questions are are things
50:54
that you’re happy about not people that
50:56
you want to denounce
50:57
the other thing i find so um
51:00
kind of baffling and confounding about
51:03
this
51:04
taboo on asking in particular
51:07
whether or not children or teenagers are
51:11
being
51:12
uh misdiagnosed with gender dysphoria
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for cultural reasons or social reasons
51:17
or because the
51:18
the understanding of it is so
51:19
preliminary um
51:21
aside from the fact that just in general
51:23
you want medicine and science and
51:26
mental health uh professionals always
51:29
asking
51:30
whether misdiagnoses are taking place
51:32
but
51:33
there’s this kind of morality now as i
51:35
know all too well and as people have
51:37
been seeing
51:38
you know it’s kind of made its
51:40
appearance in the alex morse
51:41
scandal where there’s this now
51:44
growing uh orthodoxy among
51:49
in left global politics that if you’re a
51:51
young adult
51:53
23 21 20 you lack the capacity to make
51:58
decisions for yourself that are truly
52:00
consensual about who you want to date
52:02
who you want to have sex with
52:03
frequently people cite neurological
52:06
research that says your brain isn’t
52:07
fully formed
52:09
and that therefore if someone is 28 or
52:11
30 like alex morse was
52:13
he shouldn’t be dating or having sex
52:14
with 21 or 22 year olds even if they say
52:17
they want to
52:18
because 21 and 22 year olds aren’t
52:20
capable of making
52:21
a much a pretty limited choice do i want
52:23
to have sex with this person on this
52:25
particular night or date them and yet
52:27
those same people who say that 21 year
52:30
olds or 20 year olds
52:31
aren’t capable of deciding for
52:33
themselves whether to date an older
52:35
person or whether to have sex with an
52:36
older person
52:37
want to put it off limits whether a 14
52:41
year old or a 15 year old
52:43
is sufficiently mature and has the
52:46
emotional sophistication
52:48
to make permanent life-altering
52:50
decisions about
52:51
what their gender is to the point of
52:53
having surgeries or
52:55
hormonal treatments that will alter
52:57
themselves
52:59
forever um and you know i think that
53:03
um one of the
53:07
kind of uh phenomenon that we’re seeing
53:10
in liberal
53:10
culture increasingly that’s reflected in
53:13
this treatment of joe robin
53:15
rogan as a homophobe not for saying
53:17
anything disparaging
53:19
about trans people or advocating against
53:21
equal rights quite the contrary
53:23
he he he doesn’t do that he advocates
53:26
for rights
53:27
is the idea that simply asking questions
53:29
even in response to things that probably
53:31
ought to be interrogated
53:33
is considered itself almost as bad as
53:37
malice and bigotry itself they’re kind
53:40
of equated
53:41
in a way that just will inherently repel
53:44
people from a political movement that
53:46
says
53:47
that if you have questions you have no
53:49
right to ask them and simply asking them
53:51
makes you a bad person
53:53
right and and the the i think the uh the
53:56
tying
53:56
kind of thread there is that this is
53:59
again it’s it’s about this delineation
54:02
that we have to make between liberal
54:04
politics and liberal culture
54:05
and the culture war um this is very much
54:08
about
54:09
a culture that has de-prioritized
54:12
political outcomes right
54:14
uh we see that with your example that
54:16
you just made
54:17
um with the gay rights movement we also
54:19
saw that with the alex morse campaign
54:20
right
54:21
we saw people who were much more focused
54:24
on maintaining
54:25
the integrity and the purity of the
54:28
battle they’re engaged in culturally
54:30
even at the expense of achieving real
54:33
political outcomes
54:34
right and as you just said you know
54:36
engaging debates is
54:38
is how you actually you know having that
54:41
cross-pollination of ideas
54:42
and and actually persuading people
54:44
actually engaging in persuasion
54:47
um rather than just kind of identifying
54:49
who’s on in my tribe who’s in your tribe
54:51
that’s how you achieve political
54:53
outcomes it was the same with the alex
54:54
morse right where it was
54:56
an allegation was made and we
54:58
immediately have to believe the
54:59
allegation
55:00
not investigate it because if you are a
55:03
you know if you’re a denier or if you
55:05
even hesitate to believe
55:07
what’s happening then you are not
55:09
promoting this broader idea
55:12
that there are victims in the world and
55:14
we’re not
55:15
kind of invested further investing in
55:16
the idea of victimization right
55:19
um victimization is this really core
55:21
concept to this culture where right like
55:23
we have to believe that there are
55:24
victims and we have to always support
55:27
the creation of new categories of
55:28
victimhood and if we don’t and if we’re
55:31
not engaged in that struggle
55:33
then we’re not pushing the culture war
55:34
and again it just shows
55:36
that maintaining the integrity of this
55:38
culture war is far
55:39
more important than even the political
55:41
outcomes and i think there may be some
55:43
very tangible reasons for that i think
55:45
a lot of the people that are engaged in
55:46
this stuff are people who do derive
55:49
power from cult power powerful cultural
55:51
centers right they work in academia
55:54
they work in the media and that’s how
55:55
they exert their power
55:57
over politics and over society because
55:59
again culture is how
56:01
we talk about ideas culture is how
56:04
we mold political ideas and say which
56:07
ideas can connect together which people
56:09
can connect together who can
56:10
hang out with who how cool you know
56:13
culture builds coalitions right
56:16
it builds political coalitions so um
56:19
i think there’s a very real reason why
56:22
people
56:22
are very concerned about maintaining the
56:25
integrity of this liberal culture
56:28
it’s because that’s where they derive
56:30
their power and in fact
56:32
you know they’re i mean it’s not a
56:34
surprise to see especially
56:35
now seeing cultural elites feel so
56:38
disempowered democratically right they
56:40
feel so politically disempowered
56:43
um that they would kind of throw
56:45
themselves completely into this culture
56:47
war because that’s the only place where
56:48
they can exert their power now right
56:50
and that’s why we see these insane sorts
56:53
of um
56:55
kind of concessions to even corporate
56:57
culture where they’re
56:59
so excited to allow corporations to
57:01
censor
57:02
free speech they’re so excited to allow
57:04
hr departments to and you know
57:06
indoctrinate people and run
57:08
programs on people and force people in
57:09
these programs where the people are
57:11
literally denouncing themselves because
57:13
of the way they’re born
57:14
it’s exerting power through culture
57:16
because you can’t do it politically
57:18
anymore politically it’s a lot harder
57:20
you have to get the people on your side
57:21
why would you want to get the people on
57:23
your side that’s a pain in the ass
57:24
so yeah exactly um so
57:28
and and i do think it’s interesting as
57:30
well that
57:31
that this whole concept of whether you
57:33
care about power or not because
57:35
you know i watched i mentioned martina
57:37
navratilova earlier who um
57:40
you know is obviously a person who i pay
57:42
attention to i’ve talked about before
57:44
and written about before how she was my
57:45
childhood hero
57:46
i was working on a film about her and it
57:48
was amazing to watch
57:49
that this person who is like one of the
57:52
main 20th century pioneers
57:54
of feminism she did as much to create
57:58
space for the ability of female athletes
58:01
to compete on equal terms with male
58:03
athletes in terms of money and
58:04
sponsorships and
58:05
corporations is probably anybody except
58:08
for billie jean king
58:09
she had a trans coach in 1883 and was
58:11
defending
58:13
not just lgbts and was one of the few
58:14
openly gay celebrities or athletes of
58:17
that era
58:18
you know all she kind of did was say hey
58:21
i’m kind of confused
58:23
is all you is the only thing you have to
58:25
do to enter
58:26
female professional sports and win all
58:29
the cash
58:30
awards and and prizes and trophies is
58:34
declare yourself a woman or are there
58:35
protocols
58:36
she was really asking earnestly and
58:39
in response she was just mauled um
58:42
with no generosity no kind of
58:46
you know uh consideration for her whole
58:48
history she was just instantly declared
58:50
a bigot the more she tried to defend
58:52
herself
58:53
the worse it got and then eventually
58:55
very soon thereafter she converted
58:57
into a real enemy she emerged two months
58:59
later and wrote this
59:01
article aggressively condemning the idea
59:04
that trans women should be able to
59:06
compete in female athletic and female
59:10
athletics because it the the the kind of
59:13
intolerance for her even asking
59:17
converted her it alienated her converted
59:19
her into an enemy and
59:20
it seems like people who don’t care
59:22
about outcomes are about winning
59:24
really don’t get bothered by that but
59:27
let me just ask you about one
59:28
the kind of the last um
59:32
kind of prong of the case of the liberal
59:34
case against joe rogan i find this one
59:36
really interesting
59:37
too which is you know people say
59:41
okay fine he he liked bernie like tulsi
59:45
um and yet i believe in 2016 if i’m not
59:48
mistaken
59:50
he said that he was voting for trump
59:51
over hillary
59:53
and i’m certain that after saying that
59:56
he
59:56
thought bernie was the best candidate
59:58
and really like tulsi
59:59
he’s now saying i can’t vote for biden i
60:02
probably would vote for trump over biden
60:05
which would is leading ripples to say to
60:07
people like you
60:09
why would we possibly why should we
60:12
possibly regard somebody
60:14
as an ally who is
60:18
saying twice now that they’re going to
60:19
vote for donald trump and i guess like
60:21
an
60:21
ancillary part of that question is you
60:24
know there is this phenomenon of people
60:26
who twice voted
60:27
for barack obama and then voted for
60:29
donald trump in 2016
60:31
not a small number a large number and
60:33
here in brazil
60:34
same thing you know a lot of people who
60:35
voted for bolsonaro in 2018
60:38
were people who voted for the workers
60:40
party four consecutive
60:42
elections so if you’re kind of a
60:44
political junkie who relies on the
60:46
polarization of choose between rachel
60:48
maddow and sean hanovey
60:50
it doesn’t make any sense that somebody
60:52
could do that to say i like bernie
60:54
but i’m gonna vote for trump because you
60:56
have to pick an ideological box
60:58
and joe rogan clearly is a person
61:01
who doesn’t think that way and i think
61:03
there’s like this liberal sense that
61:05
that makes him bizarre when in fact
61:07
i think it makes him pretty common it’s
61:09
one of the reasons why people like him
61:11
because he’s not in one of those boxes
61:13
but what do you say to liberals who
61:15
would make that argument that how can we
61:17
consider somebody supporting
61:19
this authoritarian racist for president
61:22
to be an ally
61:25
well i mean there are two things that
61:26
you you have to kind of
61:29
kind of set the record straight on first
61:31
is that i i’m pretty sure in 2016 he
61:33
voted for gary johnson so he voted for a
61:35
libertarian i don’t think he voted for
61:37
trump in 2016.
61:39
um and in 2020 again he first you know
61:42
supported tulsi
61:43
then he supported bernie um and then
61:46
most recently if you really
61:48
look at his comments it’s not that he’s
61:49
saying he’s endorsing trump but he’s
61:51
saying that
61:52
he would he would vote for trump um
61:55
as a result of the party choosing biden
61:57
because he just doesn’t think biden can
61:59
do the job
62:00
just from a kind of mental age
62:04
decline standpoint so it’s not like the
62:06
most heartfelt support of trump but yeah
62:08
i mean
62:08
let’s set that aside and just say okay
62:10
like he’s willing to vote for trump
62:12
right
62:12
um i mean the idea that you wouldn’t
62:15
want to engage
62:16
someone who is willing to go from the
62:19
most
62:20
liberal the most left candidate in the
62:23
democratic primary and willing to then
62:26
switch over to trump
62:27
i mean you know it’s the argument that
62:29
the left’s been making
62:30
for you know for years now right that
62:33
like
62:33
these this is the is the guy to be
62:36
studying right he’s the one that we can
62:38
kind of crack the code on
62:40
um as for you know why that’s the case
62:43
i think it’s real again it’s really
62:45
threatening i don’t think
62:46
you know i think the democratic
62:48
establishment what i tend to tell people
62:49
is that the democratic establishment
62:52
their main priority is not really to
62:54
actually even win elections
62:56
it’s to keep control of the democratic
62:58
party right like that’s where most of
63:00
their power comes from it’s certainly
63:01
where
63:02
their most reliable source of power
63:04
comes from it’s keeping control of the
63:05
party because as long as you can
63:07
keep control of the party and you keep
63:08
control of the cultural
63:10
um levers of power in the country
63:13
you’re always going to be able to
63:15
command 50
63:16
of the political system you’re always
63:18
going to be able to command
63:20
um you know the entire media apparatus
63:23
that’s devoted to politics right you’re
63:25
good
63:25
or at least half of it right you’re
63:27
going to in control the liberal half
63:29
and so i think it’s i i mean i it’s
63:32
i’m sorry to say but i think it’s a
63:34
really cynical calculation
63:36
that cultural elites and democratic
63:39
party elites are making when they make
63:41
these decisions because when when you
63:43
engage joe rogan
63:45
and you engage his viewers you’re being
63:47
bringing in
63:48
a ton of people who you can’t
63:50
necessarily rely on to keep these clean
63:52
lines of political and cultural
63:54
engagement you’re
63:55
you’re completely blowing up the
63:57
political system you’re you’re blowing
63:59
up the racket
64:00
right and why would you want to do that
64:02
because at the end of the day
64:04
hell trump could get reelected and
64:05
they’d still control the party they can
64:07
still control the other half they’d be
64:10
raising hundreds of millions of dollars
64:12
for their think tanks and therefore you
64:14
know the media institutions and so
64:16
it’s a great racket why would you risk
64:18
that just for
64:19
winning you know the presidency for
64:21
maybe four years eight years
64:22
don’t get me wrong obviously they’d like
64:24
to win that too
64:26
but i don’t think that’s the real game i
64:27
don’t think that’s ever been the real
64:28
game
64:30
we saw that in the uk right where the
64:33
centrists and playwrights and moderates
64:36
who controlled the labor party
64:38
levers of power forever whether they
64:40
were in power out of power
64:42
when they lost control of their own
64:44
party to jeremy corbyn
64:46
they it was very obvious if you’re just
64:48
paying minimal attention but we now know
64:50
from documents that have been leaked and
64:51
reports that have been issued
64:53
they were actively working against the
64:56
labor party they preferred
64:58
to destroy corbyn and retake control
65:01
of the party even if it meant empowering
65:04
the tories and making boris johnson
65:06
prime minister because as you say
65:09
their top priority is ensuring that they
65:11
maintain
65:12
control of their party and secondary
65:15
or even more distantly is actually
65:18
winning elections
65:19
um and you know i think that you know
65:22
it’s like when people ask me why i go on
65:23
tucker carlson i
65:24
can barely even understand the question
65:26
because it’s such an obvious answer
65:28
which is
65:29
because there are four million people
65:30
watching and whatever percentage it is
65:33
that i can reach in any way not
65:34
necessarily change their minds instantly
65:37
but just kind of make them a little more
65:38
open
65:39
to hearing from different people maybe
65:41
get them kind of unsettled about
65:44
who they should be paying attention to
65:46
or introducing some ideas that maybe
65:48
maybe it’s ten percent maybe it’s five
65:50
percent maybe it’s fifteen percent
65:52
why would i ignore that if i actually
65:54
care about outcomes
65:55
to watch you know i i it kind of shocked
65:58
me edward snowden
65:59
uh appeared on rogan’s show for the
66:02
second time this week and so i went back
66:03
to look at what the audience was the
66:05
first time he appeared which is
66:06
about 10 months ago and even though
66:09
edward snowden being edward snowden kind
66:11
of spoke in like a monologue form for
66:13
about
66:14
three hours you know and he was
66:16
obviously remote because he couldn’t
66:18
go to the studio since he’s trapped in
66:19
russia the audience for that
66:22
appearance from edward snowden just on
66:25
youtube never mind all the other
66:26
platforms
66:27
was 15 million people 15 million
66:31
um which is you know four or five times
66:34
the size
66:35
of a primetime cable host even on their
66:37
best night
66:38
and obviously by virtue the fact that
66:40
you watch it that people
66:42
listen to it and can hear him say i
66:44
support tulsi or i support
66:46
bernie obviously there’s huge numbers of
66:48
those
66:49
that audience that are very reachable
66:51
from a liberal perspective
66:53
anybody who says i don’t want to have
66:56
anything to do
66:57
with a show that reaches 15 million
66:59
people
67:00
is somebody to me who’s saying
67:04
i look at politics as about everything
67:06
other than
67:07
winning wielding power and changing the
67:10
world
67:11
right right and they shrouded in moral
67:13
language right they shrouded
67:15
in how could you associate with someone
67:17
like that how could you you’ll be
67:18
tainted by someone like that
67:20
um they shrouded in those things but at
67:22
the end of the day it’s a much more
67:24
cynical calculation it’s
67:25
it’s put forth as some kind of moral
67:28
decr
67:29
declaration but it’s really a cynical
67:31
calculation
67:32
calculation in terms of controlling the
67:33
party in terms of controlling cultural
67:36
power centers
67:37
why would we want to upset that this is
67:40
a great setup
67:41
um and yeah that’s why you see 15
67:43
million people tuning in to edward
67:45
snowden because it completely cult
67:47
cuts across all of these cultural lines
67:50
i mean there aren’t
67:51
you know being interested in edward
67:53
snowden just his story and what he did
67:55
and the cultural and political impact he
67:57
had
67:58
that’s not a liberal or conservative
68:00
idea that’s
68:01
that’s reaching millions of people um
68:03
but that’s just not interesting to
68:05
um what informs the you know the the
68:08
careers and the lifestyles of the people
68:10
that
68:11
sort of hold these both the political
68:13
and cultural
68:14
levers of power in the country yeah so
68:16
yeah so thanks very much for
68:18
for taking the time i i think is a
68:20
really important topic not just
68:22
because it’s important to understand the
68:24
phenomenon of joe rogan although that
68:25
is important there are very few people
68:28
having the kind of cultural
68:30
and political impact that he’s having
68:34
um in a reaching a group of people who
68:38
often tune out politics or who aren’t
68:40
engaged in the traditional ways which
68:42
makes him
68:44
even more important than just the
68:45
numbers alone but i do think too
68:47
the reaction to him tells us a lot about
68:50
how media figures view their position
68:52
how liberals view what their political
68:54
project uh is and so
68:56
um i i think your your analysis on
69:00
twitter and the discussion that we just
69:02
had
69:02
um has really clarified those issues in
69:05
in a really helpful way so thank you so
69:07
much for
69:08
taking the time to talk to me um and i
69:10
hope people will tune into your
69:13
back channel youtube program where
69:14
you’re doing a lot of these kind of
69:15
header docs
69:17
uh discussions with people across a wide
69:20
range of
69:21
ideological and cultural uh belief
69:24
systems so
69:24
thanks very much sean yeah thank you so
69:27
much i enjoyed it
69:36
you

Richard Rohr Meditation: Dying by Brightness

But the human ego prefers knowing and being certain over being honest. “Don’t bother me with the truth, I want to be in control,” it invariably says.

Most people who think they are fully conscious or “smart” and in control, have a big iron manhole cover over their unconscious. It does give them a sense of being right and in charge, but it seldom yields compassion, community, or wisdom.

.. Divine perfection is precisely the ability to include imperfection; whereas we think we must exclude, deny, and even punish it! The flow of grace is an increasing ability to forgive reality for being what it is—instead of what we want it to be!

.. The beauty of the unconscious, whether personal or collective, is that it knows a great deal, but it also knows that it does not know, cannot say, dare not try to prove or assert too strongly. What it does know is that there is always more—and all words will fall short and all concepts will be incomplete. The contemplative is precisely the person who agrees to live in that kind of blinding brightness. The paradox, of course, is that it does not feel like brightness at all, but what John of the Cross (1542-1591) called a “luminous darkness” and others identify as “learned ignorance.”

We cannot grow in the integrative dance of action and contemplation without a strong tolerance for ambiguity, an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety, and a willingness not to know—and not even to need to know. What else would give us peace and contentment?

The Anti-Christian Alt-Right

The Perverse Thought of Right-Wing Identity Politics

.. “The Church has become the number one enemy of Western Civilization. Soon the only people left in Christianity will be third-world immigrants and a handful of self-hating whites.”

..Hillary Clinton devoted a speech in Nevada to deploring its influence on the election. “These are race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas, anti-woman—all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘alt-right,’” she charged.

.. Clinton could not name a single member of a movement that, she warned, imperiled American democracy

.. The movement exists almost entirely among anonymous users of the Internet. It has no institutions, no money, no political representation, and no traditional media.

.. It enjoys the close attention of the liberal establishment it seeks to discredit and the conservative movement it intends to displace.

.. “Everything we have seen over the past year suggests that the alt-right will be around for the foreseeable future.”

.. The alt-right purports to defend the identity and interests of white people, who it believes are the compliant victims of a century-long swindle by liberal morality. Its goals are not conventionally conservative.

It does not so much question as mock standard conservative positions on free trade, abortion, and foreign policy, regarding them as principles that currently abet white dispossession.

.. Its creed, in the words of Richard Spencer, is “Race is real. Race matters. Race is the foundation of identity.”

.. the alt-right represents something more nefarious, and frankly more interesting, than white identity politics.

.. The alt-right is anti-Christian.

.. Its leading thinkers flaunt their rejection of Christianity and their desire to convert believers away from it.

.. Greg Johnson, an influential theorist with a doctorate in philosophy from Catholic University of America, argues that “Christianity is one of the main causes of white decline” and a “necessary condition of white racial suicide.”

.. it argues that Christian teachings have become socially and morally poisonous to the West.

.. Its intellectual birth is marked by the 1918 publication of the first volume of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West.

.. While the movement is often accused of advocating racial supremacy, its appeal is more often to cultural difference. A generation tired of multicultural pieties

.. A cultural relativist, Spengler rejects as a “ridiculous distortion” any view that privileges European thought or history.

.. “Each culture possesses its own standards, the validity of which begins and ends with it.

.. Spengler therefore sees the world as divided into fundamentally different cultures, whose identities he interprets in morphological terms. Cultures are like plants

.. They live through a determined cycle of birth, growth, maturity, and death. During its lifespan, a culture gives expression to the animating “form”

.. Spengler had no scholarly expertise in non-Western cultures (his advanced studies were in mathematics), and Decline of the West is frequently nonsense as both history and sociology. But its interpretations of cultural artifacts and their hidden symbolic meanings are often brilliant and have enchanted readers for a century.

.. All cultures are unique, but some are more unique than others. “We men of the Western culture are an exception,” Spengler claims. At the heart of his book is an interpretation of the culture he namedFaustian,” a term widely used in the intellectual circles of the alt-right.

.. a single idea permeates the arts and sciences of the West. Its distinctive mark is an intense striving for “infinity.”

.. our culture has uniquely sought to see all things in relation to the highest or most distant horizons, which, in turn, it seeks to surpass and extend.

  • The vaults of medieval cathedrals, the
  • discovery of perspective in painting, the
  • exploration of the New World, the
  • development of orchestral music, the
  • invention of the telescope and
  • calculus

—in Spengler’s story, all express the Faustian drive toward transcendence.

.. He argues that there is no Christianity without Western civilization. He arrives at this conclusion by claiming the West begins not with ancient Greece or Rome, but with the high Middle Ages and the birth of scholasticism, Gothic architecture, and polyphony.

.. Its cultural achievements are not testimonies to faith in God. They are the monuments of Faustian man’s attempt—in speculation, stone, glass, and sound—to propel himself into infinity. Of this aspiration, Spengler maintains, “the Gospels know nothing.”

..  In the minds and hands of Europeans, Christianity became a religion that affirmed the unceasing expansion of human freedom, power, and knowledge.

.. There is no biblical god for Faustian man, but there is high Christian culture, which is a tribute to his identity.

.. To a young man lacking a strong identity he says, “This heroic culture is your inheritance, and yours alone. You stand in a line of men who have attained the highest excellences and freely endured the hardest challenges.

.. Albert the Great, Cortés, Newton, Goethe, the Wright brothers all carry this daring spirit, and so do you.”

.. in his 1933 book Hour of Decision, he foresaw the rise of democratic “Caesars” and growing racial animosity. Who will give birth to the next great culture? Not Europeans

.. Spengler predicted the future would belong to the race that had preserved its “strength” in face of the rising “colored menace.”

  • If Spengler is the alt-right’s cultural critic,
  • Julius Evola is its political mystic.
    • Umberto Eco mockingly called him “the magician,” and the
    • future Pope Paul VI condemned his writings in a Vatican newspaper
    • Evola is the most right-wing thinker possible in the modern world. There is nobody to his right, nor can there be. His influence on the alt-right is detectable in one of its most controversial features: its rejection of human equality.
    • “We don’t belong to the liberal family,” writes popular blogger Hunter Wallace. “Nothing is less self-evident to us than the notion that all men are created equal.” Here is the movement’s clearest dispute with conventional conservatism
    • The alt-right denies that constitutional democracy is worthy of principled veneration. For Evola, its popular acceptance is a sign we are living in a spiritual dark age.

The basic problem with modernity is “desacralization,” the collapse of spiritual meaning in daily life. Work, family, and citizenship are no longer saturated with spiritual importance, but are understood in functionally secular terms.

.. materialism “kills every possibility

.. Spengler’s fundamental flaw was that he “lacked any understanding of metaphysics and transcendence,” which led him to conclude that human cultures are irreducibly different.

.. Evola believed more or less the exact opposite, arguing that there are timeless and universal principles that have provided the foundation for every true civilization. He referred to these perennial truths as “Tradition,” and he traced the disorders of modernity to our loss of contact with it.

.. No, the world had been slouching into spiritual poverty ever since the eighth century b.c., when the world of Tradition began to disappear.

.. Revolt Against the Modern Worldclaimed that these primordial societies—whose existence can be accessed only by way of myth and legend, not critical scholarship—all operated on the same principles.

.. In a traditional culture, every aspect of human life, every social activity, role, and caste, was dedicated to the service of an otherworldly order; indeed, they were ritual pathways into it. “According to Tradition,” Evola imagines, “every authority is fraudulent, every law unjust and barbarous, every institution is vain and ephemeral unless . . . they are derived from above.”

.. His key claim is that traditional societies were hierarchically ordered under an absolute ruler, who embodied the sacral order itself.

..  Men Among the Ruins, he argued that political conservatism is intrinsically impossible in a democratic age. True political order can never come from below; it must always be imposed from above.

.. only a transformative leader could elevate humanity out of its degraded state. Such a leader could not appeal to the masses—this was the mistake of the vulgar fascisms of Mussolini and Hitler—but must inspire submission through lofty contempt for democratic norms and popular tastes.

“The presence of superior individuals bestows on a multitude . . . a meaning and a justification they previously lacked,” Evola wrote. “It is the inferior who needs the superior, and not the other way around.”

Evola was less clear about what this sacred authority looked like than what stood in the way of its realization.

.. The problem is that Catholicism forbids the sacred state. And a state without absolute spiritual unity is no state at all.

.. Benoist is the leading theorist of the European New Right, an intellectual movement that began in France in the late 1960s

.. however, no return is necessary if we simply move beyond Christianity altogether. Evola did not believe in a personal deity, but his criticisms of Christianity were political rather than theological. With Benoist, the alt-right becomes explicitly and confessionally anti-Christian.

.. took its inspiration from the failed “conservative revolution” of Weimar Germany.

Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, and Spengler were its chief figures

.. Most of its members, including Spengler, took sides against the Nazi regime, but they also sought a path for the West beyond the twin evils of American democracy and Soviet communism. Benoist comes from this anti-liberal tradition

.. Benoist is the leading theorist of the European New Right, an intellectual movement that began in France in the late 1960s

.. attempt to envision a post-Christian future for people of European descent.

.. his 1981 work On Being a Pagan

.. Paganism’s central claim is simple: that the world is holy and eternal. “Far from desacralizing the world,” Benoist tells us, paganism “sacralizes it in the literal sense of the word, since it regards the world as sacred.”

Paganism is also a humanism. It recognizes man, the highest expression of nature, as the sole measure of the divine.

.. God does not therefore create men; men make gods, which “exist” as ideal models that their creators strive to equal.

.. Benoist’s case against Christianity is that it forbids the expression of this “Faustian” vitality.

.. It does so by placing the ultimate source of truth outside of humanity, in an otherworldly realm to which we must be subservient.

.. He accuses Christianity of crippling our most noble impulses. Christianity makes us strangers in our own skin, conning us into distrusting our strongest intuitions. We naturally respect beauty, health, and power, Benoist observes, but Christianity teaches us to revere the deformed, sick, and weak instead.

.. Benoist’s theology is in the service of a political warning, and it is this, more than his Nietzschean posturing, that attracts the alt-right.

.. Christianity is unable to protect European peoples and their cultures.

.. Christianity is not our religion.

..  Benoist means that Christianity renders Western culture morally lethargic and culturally defenseless.

.. its universalism poisons our attachments to particular loyalties and ties.

.. “If all men are brothers,” Benoist claims, “then no one can truly be a brother.”

.. Politics depends on the recognition of both outsiders and enemies, yet the Christian Church sees all people as potential members, indeed potential saints.

.. Christianity imparted to our culture an ethics that has mutated into what the alt-right calls “pathological altruism.”

.. Its self-distrust, concern for victims, and fear of excluding outsiders—such values swindle Western peoples out of a preferential love for their own.

.. Christianity today is the enemy of the West and the race that created it

.. we ought to see ourselves through the eyes of our pagan critics

.. They distort many truths, through both malice and ignorance, and lead young men into espousing views and defending authors they scarcely understand.

.. “Christianity provides an identity that is above or before racial and ethnic identity,” Richard Spencer complains.

.. invoking race as an emergency replacement for our fraying civic bonds.

.. identity politics on the left is a response to the same erosion of belonging.

.. we lack a compelling civic theology for the twenty-first century—a theology of the nation

.. In its absence the alt-right will continue to grow.

.. A nation will become an idol, however, if its cultural inheritance is not oriented toward, and inwardly transformed by, a divine inheritance.

.. “The inheritance we receive from Christ,” the late pope argued, “orients the patrimony of human native lands and cultures toward an eternal home land.”

.. It speaks of tradition, while transmitting no traditions. It guards a false patrimony, while destroying real ones

..  Race offers no inheritance, and its mere preservation reflects no human achievement.

.. Our stories, art, music, institutions, and religious traditions—unlike race—are transmitted only through special efforts of human intelligence and love. They are a bequest of the spirit, not blood.

.. The alt-right speaks a seductive language. Where liberalism offers security and comfort, the alt-right promises sacrifice and conflict.

.. . For Christians, the problem with Faustian man is not the vaunting heroism of his aims. It is the pitiable smallness of his goals.

We are not meant to merely aspire to the infinite. We are called to participate in it—to be, in a word, deified.

Faust could not overcome death. Through Christ, Christians already have.

Richard Rohr Meditation: Full Participation

Unfortunately, the monumental insights of the Axial Age (800-200 BC) began to wane, descending into the extreme headiness of some Scholastic philosophy (1100-1700), the antagonistic mind of most church reformations, and the rational literalism of the Enlightenment (17th and 18th centuries). Although the reformations were inevitable, good, and necessary, they also ushered in the “desert of nonparticipation,” as Owen Barfield described, where hardly anyone belonged, few were at home in this world, and religion at its worst concentrated on excluding, condemning, threatening, judging, exploiting new lands and peoples, and controlling its own members by shame and guilt. This happened on the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant sides; the primary difference is what we shamed.